The whole article is poetry. Amazing.

“Rotten was a key you turned that locked a door behind you.”

I remember as a kid I went to a local internet café with a few friends to spend the evening playing Halo for one of their birthdays. I was sat at my computer waiting for one of the others to be set up so we could get going. To fill the time I absent-mindedly started browsing rotten.com, not realising (or perhaps just not caring) that the woman in charge of the café could monitor our browsing. After a few minutes I looked over to see her staring at me with a mix of confusion and disgust. I just sheepishly closed the window (no tabs back then). I'm lucky I wasn't kicked out much less put on some list!

Similarly, pain olympics.

if you stared too long into rotten.com did not rotten.com also stare into you?

I always thought it sucked that ratemypoo got taken down but rotten didn't

Ah, Bonsaikitten. Happier times

I recall back in the late 90s when someone showed me this site, back when no one had own computers. This one pic of some cars crash (i think) where some unlucky dudes face was basically caved in, while he was still alive. That image was burned to my mind, and it still haunts me to this day.

White background with blue links? Why do I remember Rotten as red on black?

Mistakenly, i thought it was about Rotten Tomatoes, and i started thinking about how a movie like Michael ranked badly, the critics missed the whole point of watching a movie, to be entertained, sadly, here on HN, sometimes we miss the point too, if that involves some names